When
this had been done, their eldest son Gennosuke was led forward to the
scaffold, in front of the two parents. Then Sogoro cried out--

"Oh! cruel, cruel! what crime has this poor child committed that he
is treated thus? As for me, it matters not what becomes of me." And
the tears trickled down his face.

The spectators prayed aloud, and shut their eyes; and the executioner
himself, standing behind the boy, and saying that it was a pitiless
thing that the child should suffer for the father's fault, prayed
silently. Then Gennosuke, who had remained with his eyes closed, said
to his parents--

"Oh! my father and mother, I am going before you to paradise, that
happy country, to wait for you. My little brothers and I will be on
the banks of the river Sandzu,[65] and stretch out our hands and help
you across. Farewell, all you who have come to see us die; and now
please cut off my head at once."

[Footnote 65: The Buddhist Styx, which separates paradise from hell,
across which the dead are ferried by an old woman, for whom a small
piece of money is buried with them.]

With this he stretched out his neck, murmuring a last prayer; and not
only Sogoro and his wife, but even the executioner and the spectators
could not repress their tears; but the headsman, unnerved as he was,
and touched to the very heart, was forced, on account of his office,
to cut off the child's head, and a piteous wail arose from the parents
and the spectators.

Then the younger child Sohei said to the headsman, "Sir, I have a sore
on my right shoulder: please, cut my head off from the left shoulder,
lest you should hurt me. Alas! I know not how to die, nor what I
should do."

When the headsman and the officers present heard the child's artless
speech, they wept again for very pity; but there was no help for it,
and the head fell off more swiftly than water is drunk up by sand.
Then little Kihachi, the third son, who, on account of his tender
years, should have been spared, was butchered as he was in his
simplicity eating the sweetmeats which had been thrown to him by the
spectators.

When the execution of the children was over, the priests of Tokoji
took their corpses, and, having placed them in their coffins, carried
them away, amidst the lamentations of the bystanders, and buried them
with great solemnity.

Then Shigayemon, one of the servants of Danzayemon, the chief of the
Etas, who had been engaged for the purpose, was just about to